Obama claims his "bitter" remarks were "mangled"; then repeats attacks on guns, religion, and angry people

Extract from Debate 4/16/08 at Obama WTF?

MR. GIBSON: Talking to a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco 10 days ago, you got talking in California about small-town Pennsylvanians who have had tough economic times in recent years. And you said they get bitter, and they cling to guns or they cling to their religion or they cling to antipathy toward people who are not like them.

Now, you've said you misspoke; you said you mangled what it was you wanted to say. But we've talked to a lot of voters. Do you understand that some people in this state find that patronizing and think that you said actually what you meant?

SENATOR OBAMA: Well, I think there's no doubt that I can see how people were offended. It's not the first time that I've made, you know, a statement that was mangled up. It's not going to be the last.

But let me be very clear about what I meant, because it's something that I've said in public, it's something that I've said in television, which is that people are going through very difficult times right now and we are seeing it all across the country. And that was true even before the current economic hardships that are stemming from the housing crisis. This is the first economic expansion that we just completed in which ordinary people's incomes actually went down, when adjusted for inflation, at the same time as their costs of everything from health care to gas at the pump have skyrocketed.

And so the point I was making was that when people feel like Washington's not listening to them, when they're promised year after year, decade after decade, that their economic situation is going to change, and it doesn't, then politically they end up focusing on those things that are constant, like religion.

They end up feeling "This is a place where I can find some refugee. This is something that I can count on." They end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns, where traditions have been passed on from generation to generation. And those are incredibly important to them.

Hang on ...didn't Obama just repeat the same ideas he previously claimed he mangled. This time he did so using considerably more words. He clearly meant every word he said on both occasions.

And later he says people are angry...ie another way of saying bitter

And so what I think I tried to do in the speech here at the Constitution Center was speak to a broader context, which is that there is anger in the African American community that sometimes gets expressed, whether in the barbershop or in the church.That's true not just in the African American community. That's true in other communities as well.

Which communities?...this time he doesn't tell us which communities are angry...probably the same ones as he thinks are bitter but cant use that word any more. Same thought...different verbage